Monday, April 25, 2016

Living in the Book of Acts pt. 2

“In
the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the
dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this
charge:2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of
season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful
instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound
doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them
a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and
turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure
hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of
your ministry.”

2 Timothy 4:1-5

I
wasn’t going to write anything until later on down the road. On our way out, my
wife and I really just wanted to focus on moving forward with my God and with
our lives. But the day we left our email was flooded with people who said they
were feeling like they wanted to leave as well. Even still, I didn’t want to
persuade anyone one way or another. But then I remembered the Scripture above.
This was the Scripture that my father in the faith read to me when he appointed
me as an Evangelist at the 2014 Global Leadership Conference.

In front of 2,000 witnesses I
made a declaration to uphold this Scripture. To preach the word. To correct,
rebuke, and encourage. Because the day will come, and I believe has come, when
men will not put up with sound doctrine but instead gather around a great
number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. And then I
remembered that by that oath I am obligated to speak up, speak out, and speak
against any doctrine that is not sound. I do not claim to be a Bible scholar
but that word in the Greek is hygiano, which
means “to be sound, to be well, to be in good health”.

If
you want to save yourself to time of reading through this rather long document,
then know that essentially we left the International Christian Churches/SoldOut
Discipling Movement because we found the doctrine to not be sound or healthy
for true Christians. You can be saved there but I believe eventually you have
to leave because the foundation of the movement is broken. We went all the way
back to when we first studied the First
Principles and decided to be noble Bereans (Acts 17:10-12) and check
up on what our religious leaders have told us to see if what they were saying
was true. Most of us in the movement, if we have checked up on what is being taught, have checked through roses colored lens and preconceived notions. We check with the intent of reaffirming what we currently hold to be true. For the first time since we were baptized, my wife and I looked at the Scriptures as if we didn't already know what we would find. We studied with the intent to let the word teach us what is true, instead of using the Scriptures to reinforce what we already held to be true. When we did this, we found more deviations from the Scriptures than we expected and so
we made the decision that God was calling us to come out of the ICC.

Who
This Address To

Before
we get into we the what, when, why, and how I want to first start by defining
who this is addressed to.

Kip
McKean

Brother, the reality is that if
it was not for your faith, vision, and drive to see the world won many of us
would not have come to know Christ the way we have. For that we say thank you.
With that being said, I believe there are some serious flaws in your teaching
that need your careful consideration immediately. I understand you have been
doing this for nearly 40 years now so this may come across as a personal
attack. Please know this is not personal attack on you or what you have built.
At this point in my life, I’m no longer a part of your organization, so how you
respond will not directly impact the decisions of my life. This is not intended
to be a rebuke but an exhortation (1 Timothy 5:1)

The
International Christian Churches’ World Sector Leaders and Central Leadership
Council

I understand that for many of
you, that our brother Kip helped you in a moment when the prior movement had
crashed and many of you were hurting and confused about what was happening. He
has helped you renew your faith, marriages, vision, and love for God. He was
able to answer and explain so many questions you had at a time when others had
no answers for you. All I ask is that you do not allow sentiment to cloud
your judgement as you read this document. I am not trying to destroy what you
are building, however, I believe you guys have a responsibility to brother Kip
and to the people underneath your care. If our brother Kip starts to go astray
in doctrine and theology you have a responsibility to pull him back into sound
doctrine because he is the leader of your movement. You also have a
responsibility to the people underneath your care, to ensure they are being
properly instructed in the word of God (1 Peter 5:2-4). Again this is not a
rebuke but rather an exhortation.

Every
Evangelist and Women’s Ministry in the ICC

We are not free from the guilt
of our leaders if we comply with their decisions. Many of you are aware of the
things that I am going to bring up. We’ve talked about them when our World
Sector Leaders were not around. As you will see in this document, I believe there
are only so many “Amens” you can give before you’re just being a people
pleaser. You all took an oath of the same Scripture we did (2
Timothy 4:1-5) You guys learned the same First Principles we did. I’m not saying you need to revolt, but you
do need to do whatever is necessary to fulfill your oath to this Scripture.

Every
Remnant Disciple in The ICC

You will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Every
Other Disciple Currently In The ICC

Again, I am not calling for
anyone purposely do anything rebellious. However, you must understand no leader
in or outside the movement died on the cross for your sins, only Jesus did. You
will have to give an account for your life on the Day of Judgement. You have a
personal responsibility to the Lord to test the spirits (1
John 4:1) My hope is this will inspire you to dig deeper into the
Scriptures and develop a deeper relationship with the Lord.

What
the Document Is and Is Not

I
know I will be talking about very sensitive things in this document so let me
explain up front what this is and is not:

What
this is not:

·This is not another Henry Kriette
Letter –I’m am not trying to implode the movement. I am simply answering the
questions that we have received

·This is not a personal attack toward
any leader in the ICC – I have no interest in painting anyone in a negative
light

·This is not my attempt to be
divisive (as the Bible defines divisiveness) – I am not trying to start a new
group (on the contrary, my wife and I are looking for an established fellowship
to become a part of) and I am not trying to pull people away from the Biblical
teachings of gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.

·I am not the final authority –
Ultimately, Jesus is the final authority and we all must work out our salvation
with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13)

What this is:

·This is an explanation of our
actions – people want to know why we left and the reasons behind them

·This is our experience in the leadership of the ICC, not everyone else
– Just because the things I’m about to explain happened to us does not mean
they are happening to everyone in leadership. But I have my suspicions that they are.

·This is the conviction we came to
after personal prayer, fasting, and bible study – Again, building our own
convictions based on the word of God about the doctrine and practices of the
ICC. This does not mean that everyone needs to believe what we believe to be
saved. This is just what we believe from the word of God is best.

·This is a call to pay more careful
attention of the way all my brothers and sisters conduct themselves in Christ

Now
ultimately from this point on you can decide how you want to receive and react
to the following information. I believe though that there will be two kinds of
disciples who will read this article: mature disciples and immature disciples.
An immature disciple will do one of two things 1) take this document and use it
as a platform to fight and rebel against the leadership in the ICC and
ultimately will begin to draw people away after themselves. This is the
immature approach. Don’t rebel. If you don’t believe it can be changed from
within just leave like we did. 2) the immature disciple may also just dismiss this document
without even considering whether or not some, most, or all of the points I
bring up could be right. Sadly, in my experience this is what I’ve seen in our
leadership. Instead of considering and addressing the Scriptures that are
presented, they have made up in their minds they are right, and proceed to
dismiss the speaker without even addressing the things that are being said.
They will say things like he’s “hurt”, “bitter”, “out there”, “doesn’t even
know what he’s talking about”, “not a disciple”, “divisive”, “contemptuous”,
“Satan has got to him”, “he deserted us”. All things that will not address the
concerns that I will bring up. This is just old ministry technique used to discredit
the speaker rather than address the speech. It will end in a marking or
disfellowshipment because it’s “hurtful to the flock”. You can respond that way
if you want but that gets you nowhere except one less friend on Facebook

However, the mature disciple will actually give
consideration to the thoughts and Scriptures I present here. And even though
they may not change their current belief about the topics I present, they will
nonetheless learn what they can about their own personal walk and the structure
and policies of the movement and seek to improve what needs improvement. They
will reform the areas that need reformation and continue trying to build up the
kingdom. Or things said here may actually resonate with them and after their
personal prayer and Bible study it will give them the courage to make similar
decisions as my wife and I have.

Why
Did We Leave?

Anyone
and everyone in the ICC would agree that from time to time decisions are made
that just don’t sit well with you. A pledge drive, an extra push for Special
Missions, a young leader in your church being sent somewhere, you being
ask/told to do something that you don’t really want to do, etc. I’m sure we
could come up with a laundry list of things. Most of the time we say “Amen” and
get behind whatever is being done and just move forward chalking it up to
“that’s just how things are in the kingdom”, “this is the need of the hour”,
“the movement is moving” whatever expression gets you through it. After seven
of half year of saying “Amen” I finally decided to investigate and search the
Scriptures as to why we do what we do. I felt obligated to do so because of the
oath I made as an Evangelist, to ensure that the doctrine is sound.

Also, I noticed things happening differently than
when I first got baptized. Things were changing and something inside me said it
wasn’t for the right. The reality is that I came to the conviction to leave the
ICC because I studied the doctrine of the ICC and found it not to be sound
doctrine. I did not consult someone from the ICOC. I did not talk to someone
who was mark or disfellowshipped until after I made the decision to leave. I
read our official church documents: First
Principles Bible Study Series, Revolution Through Restoration I,II,II, The
Biblical Differences Between The ICOC and the ICC, A Concern For All The
Churches, & kipmckean.com

After reading our official documents I came to
the conclusion that the reason why we from time to time feel like something is
off is because something is off. It’s the foundation on which the movement is
built upon. Today in the ICC, there are at least three things wrong with it’s
foundation (I believe you can find many more, but four was enough for me to
make the decision to leave):

Let me start by saying that I absolutely agree with 3 of the
5 Core Convictions. One of them is an opinion and nice goal so I agree with
that one too and one is just down right heretical. However, what I firmly disagree
with is how we implement all five of these convictions.

A Bible Church v. New Testament
Church Taken from your writing from the article “The Biblical Differences Between the The International Church of
Christ And The International Christian Churches” Kip wrote:

“The Mainline Church of
Christ is an off-shoot of the Restoration Movement begun in the United States
in the early 1800’s by Thomas Campbell, Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone to
name a few. Their plea was to “restore the New Testament Church.” Therefore,
they believed that though the Old Testament was divinely inspired and
historically accurate, only the New Testament would be their sole rule of faith
and practice in deciding matters of doctrine including ecclesiastical
structure. This is now the conviction of the most influential leaders in the
ICOC.

However, we in the ICC
believe like Paul who wrote in late 66 AD – some 35 years after the beginning
of the church,“All
Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting,
and training in righteousness.”(2
Timothy 3:16) Technically speaking, the word“Scripture”in this passage refers to only the Old
Testament. Now, through the inspiration of the Spirit, we believe that it
applies as well to the New Testament. Though we believe “the Law” is no longer
binding (Colossians 2:13-14), the Scriptural concepts in the Old Testament such
as “calling out the remnant,” “dating and marrying only disciples,” and “a
central leader and leadership for God’s movement” are in the New Testament, yet
the Old Testament is much richer in its depth on these vital issues. Also, the
“Jethro Principle” of leadership in Exodus18 allows us to lead and take care of
thousands of God’s precious people. Therefore, we believe we are commanded by
God to build congregations based on both the Old and New Testaments – a “Bible
Church,” not simply a “New Testament Church.”

As I read through this again and again, initially in an
effort to defend our cause, I couldn’t help but ask what did Thomas Campbell,
Alexander Campbell, and Barton Stone mean when their plea was to “restore the
New Testament Church”? Are they not just trying to get back to the church of
the Bible? Kip preaches all the time in regards to the evangelization of
nations in this generation, “that if they did it in the first century, we can
do it in the 21st century!” Is that not trying to restore the New
Testament church? Even in Kip’s own Revolution Through Restoration (which every
ICCM student is required to read) the article said:

“During my years at
Charleston and Memphis, I devoted myself to studying the Old Testament. At this
major turning point in my life, I came to a deep conviction that, unlike the
traditional Church of Christ which claimed only to be a "New Testament
church," a better understanding of God's eternal plan would cause us to
be a Bible church.”

Revolution Through
Restoration I

“The Lord allowed me to
begin the restoration of the New Testament church from a small group of 30
would-be disciples in the Gempel's living room in June of 1979 in Boston.”

Revolution Through
Restoration II

So here we have three articles written by the same person in three
different time periods. In the first (RtRI), it is better to be a Bible church
rather than a New Testament church. In the second (RtR2) the boast seems to be
the restoration of the New Testament church. And in the third (Biblical
Differences) the ICOC is condemned for being just a New Testament church. It
seemed to me like whichever one was convenient to our brother Kip at the time
was the right way.

In the article on the Biblical Differences Between the ICOC and ICC it was
said that their fault was that they used only the New Testament for “deciding matters of doctrine including
ecclesiastical structure.” And then 2 Timothy 3:16-17 was quoted. 2 Timothy
3:16-17 has nothing to do with deciding matters of doctrine as it pertains to
ecclesiastical structure. It has to do with teaching, correcting, rebuking, and
training, primarily through the means of preaching because people will turn to
false doctrine. (2 Timothy 4:1-3). Why aren’t we letting the Bible interpret
the Bible instead of using the Bible to support our views? How can we say that
we are no longer bound by the Law but then we threaten church discipline on anyone
who doesn’t give a tithe? Tithing is an Old Testament commandment. How can we
say we aren’t bound by the law but then use Scriptures like Deuteronomy
17:12-13 to disfellowship anyone who shows contempt? It seems to me that we are
binding people to the law. The reason we rely so heavily on the Old Testament
is because without it we cannot implement the false doctrine that there must
be a Centralized Leadership with a Central Leader inside of Christianity. I
have no problem with using the Old Testament for teaching, rebuking,
correcting, and training of men and women’s characters like 2 Timothy 3:16-17
instructs us but to use the Old Testament to establish ecclesiastical structure
is just not healthy doctrine. Yes, I believe in being a Bible church, but not
the way the ICC interprets a Bible church.

In the Movement
this “Core Conviction” is implemented in such a way that all you do is bind
God’s people to manmade traditions of discipleship partners (taken from
Exodus 18), a central leader (taken from Number 27:15-17), and financial
sacrifice (Malachi 3:6-12). I do not think that discipleship partners, a
central leader, and giving a weekly contribution are wrong of themselves. But
when we don’t give people an option to decide for themselves in these matters
the degree to which they will implement these manmade traditions in their own lives,
I believe we take liberties that the Scriptures do not give us. When we tell God’s
people who is going to disciple them and they must have a discipler because
that is the way we practice discipleship in our fellowship, and that they must
submit to the Central Leadership, and they are required to give a contribution,
and all these other things prior to them getting baptized in our fellowship we
are no better than the Pharisees. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees,
you hypocrites!You shut the door of the
kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you
let those enter who are trying to.” Matthew 23:13-14
There is no way before God we can tell people that they must believe in a Bible
Church the way we believe in a Bible Church before they can get baptized in our
fellowship and think we doing a service to the lost or to God.

Interpretation
of Scripture

Another quote from your Restoration Through
Revolution article:

“Along with
this, I came to differ with the Churches of Christ whose

creed is
"to speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible

is
silent." This creed dictated that one must have specific authorization

by command,
example or necessary inference from the Bible to do

anything. It
developed a legalistic, pharisaic mind set that sowed the

seed for much
dissension and division producing the factions of the

Churches of
Christ.

For
example, the whole mandate to only "call Bible things by Bible names"
is

contradictory
because the word "Bible" is not even in the Bible! From the

Scriptures I
came to believe the opposite. I believe that we should be silent

where the Bible
speaks and speak where the Bible is silent. In other words, a

Christian
should simply obey where the Bible speaks and only speak (have

opinions)
where the Bible is silent.

In building a
life, a church or a "system" for a movement, we are "free"
to do

anything the
Scriptures do not specifically, by command, by example or by

strive
to be faithful to the direction and the spirit of the Scriptures.”

Again, I fully believe in this conviction but the
implementation of this conviction is why we are leaving. What is actually being
done is that WE are not free to choose anything, Kip and those Kip appoints
hold all the authority to speak where the Bible is silent. Whenever Kip or
Kip’s personally appointed leaders form an opinion on something, the rest of us
are bound to it. For instance, it was decided that we would have 3x Missions
contribution in February. I’m pretty sure the Bible is silent on how, when, and
how much we are to collect for planting churches yet someone spoke where the
Bible was silent and now we are all bound to it. Last year someone decided how
much the Global Leadership Conference would be. No problem. But then every
evangelist was hounded with weekly sometimes daily emails asking for an update
on how many people were registered so that we would break even in the budget.
Again, someone spoke where the Bible was silent and then made US obey it and
carry it out as if it is actual church doctrine. When do I get to speak where
the Bible is silent? In the movement, I don’t.

Another quote from the Bible Differences article on Biblical
Interpretation:

“Though
the ICOC is mixed in these practices, at the 2002 Long Beach Unity Meeting,
there was a call to eliminate World Sector Leaders, Lead Evangelists, and
Women’s Ministry Leaders, because these “titles” could not be found in the New
Testament. Thus they were deemed “unbiblical.”

I did some research to see what the ICOC actually
believes and I found this written by Mike Taliaferro in 2014 in responds to an
article written by Raul Moreno (that appears to have been taken down from our
archives…)

“Another statement that caught our attention
was, “The mainline Churches of Christ and the ICOC of today in general
believe that the principles and methodologies that can be applied to the church
are found only in the New Testament. They embrace the teachings of the American
restoration movement of the 1800’s. Thomas Campbell, one of the early
restoration movement leaders, coined the phrase, 'Speak where the Bible speaks
and be silent where the Bible is silent.' In other words, if there was not an
explicit command or pattern in the New Testament, then any other practice would
be viewed 'unscriptural.' For example, it became sin in the eyes of the
mainlineChurchofChristto use musical instruments in
the worship service, because it does not occur in the churches in the New
Testament, except in heaven in Revelation."

This statement is a complete
misrepresentation of the ICOC. First of all, church buildings, pews, song
books, Bible Talks, discipleship partners, Bring Your Neighbor Day, sound
amplification, communion trays, and printed invitations are not found in the
pages of the New Testament. We have no problem with them. They are obviously
expedient and useful in carrying out the commands found in the Bible. I know of
no evangelist or elder in the ICOC who believes that any practice not mentioned
in the Bible is “unscriptural.” And you must know, Raul, that most of our
congregations use musical instruments in their worship services. Why do you accuse
us of something we simply do not believe? Most of us believe that we are able
to do things that are not explicitly commanded or patterned in the New
Testament, as long as they are helpful. We just don’t agree with YOUR practices
recently.

Another statement you make is, “This
clash of Biblical interpretation and application ignited the events of
2002-2003. Concepts such as World Sector Leaders, Geographic Sector Leaders,
Lead Evangelists, discipling, Bible Talks, central leadership and a “leader of
the movement” were abandoned by most ICOC churches and called “unbiblical.”

You must be joking, Raul! While
doctrinal concepts were certainly a part of the discussion, it was not the main
problem. What ignited the events of 2003 is that our leader lost the confidence
of those he led. The abuse of statistics, the overbearing style of leadership
that was harming disciples in many of our churches, and the constant pillaging
of US churches to build up the LA church led to many of the problems of 2003.
In most people’s opinion, leadership needed to be changed. Our leadership
structure never matured to meet the demands of a growing, maturing
international family of churches. We had submitted ourselves to a Catholic type
system for two decades where all power rested with one man. It became evident
that that man needed to sit down for a while and recover himself spiritually.
Kip, to his credit, apologized for his sins in various public settings. Change
was needed and it began to happen. Shortly after Kip stepped down, Henry
Kriete’s letter ignited the anger of many disciples around the world who had
been harmed by certain practices within the church. The next two years were
quite painful indeed. As I lived through it all, “Biblical interpretation” was
not at the center of the storm. Failed, unbiblical leadership and unresolved
conflicts were the cause of the firestorm. It appears that you are trying to
rewrite history.

Please note as well that many of the examples
of “unbiblical” practices you list are still practiced today in the ICOC. I
personally am a “Lead Evangelist”. While no one is using the title of
Geographic Sector Leader, we still have many men who carry out similar
responsibilities just like Titus did in the New Testament. Obviously, most of
our churches have Bible Talks and Discipleship Partners. You need to go back
and get your facts straight.”

Someone is lying. I’ve always been taught that the ICOC
believes in a different interpretation of Scripture. But yet a “Lead
Evangelist” from the ICOC says differently. It seems to me that we were told
that ICOC believed something different so that all the remnant disciples would
stay in our movement and not go to the ICOC. I’ve never set foot in the ICOC
since I’ve became a disciple, but I know many in the movement who have. Not one
of them have ever came back and said that they believe in a different mode of
interpretation of Scripture

Referring to the Scripture
you quoted from your Revolution Through Restoration Article:

“See to
it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which
depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces[a]of this worldrather than on Christ.9 For in Christ all the fullnessof
the Deity lives in bodily form,10 and
in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the headover
every power and authority.” Colossians 2:8-10

This Scripture
says in Christ, I’ve been brought to completeness. It says He is the head over
every power and authority. So why do I need a middle man in between me and
Christ speaking for me where Jesus did not speak? Shouldn’t I through prayer,
fasting, Bible study, and advice come to my own conclusion about how I should
live my life? If I don’t do that, I may run the danger of someone taking me
captive through hollow and deceptive
philosophy (like the ICOC’s Biblical interpretations), which depends on
human traditions such as World Sector Leaders, Overseeing Evangelist,
Discipleship Partners. All which are good and healthy if implemented in the
right way, but we do not implement them in a healthy way and this is why so
many are leaving the movement even as I write this letter.

My second issue
with this is that when you build an entire movement based on speaking where the
Bible is silent, you end up speaking where the Bible is speaking. For example:

“Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart
to give,not reluctantly or under compulsion,for
God loves a cheerful giver.” 2 Corinthians 9:7

According to the Bible, I have the right to
decide what I want to give. However, in my near 8 years in the movement, not
once have I ever been given an option as to how much I could give in regards to
Special Missions. I’m always told that we are giving a 20x or a 9x or a 5x,
etc. I’m a little confused at when “we” decided this. According to the Bible, I
get to decide how much I’m going to give or if I’m going to give at all. Again,
Kip speaks where the Bible is silent and implement Special Missions and then
say we all need to give it and get behind the plan of God. I’m sorry but it
seems that the plan of God is directly opposed to the Word of God. Therefore, I
must conclude that this is not God’s plan, not God’s movement. God’s leader
would not purposely contradict God’s Word over and over again, even after many
from this movement and prior have warned him about this type of behavior.

Discipling
is A Command, Not Optional

100% I agree with this. We all need the fellowship
of brothers and sisters who help us stay on the straight and narrow. But the
implementation of this is nothing more than a way to control the flock. From
your Biblical Differences article:

In our modern world with such busy schedules in such an individualistic
and highly structured society, we have found that the only way to guarantee
that every member in our congregations is being discipled is to have structured
discipling – discipleship partners.

From this I understand that
Kip looked at the structure of today’s modern world and concluded that the only
way to guarantee every member in our congregation is being discipled is to have
structure discipling. So instead of looking at the Scriptures and finding what
the culture is like in God’s kingdom and imitating what we see in the Bible, he
looked at the world and said, “the world is highly structured, therefore the
kingdom needs to be highly structured.” I don’t think I need to go into details
as to why this is bad theology (but I will later).

The problem is that it
creates an us vs. them mentality with other disciples around the world. We
automatically say that if a group does not have a structured discipling plan
then that group does not believe in discipling. It is a shallow way to judge
whether or not somebody is a disciple. Somebody could just agree to have a
discipler and not really be a disciple. Also it doesn’t get to the root of the
issue. If someone is not seeking advice, input, direction, correction,
teaching, training, and rebuking perhaps this person cares nothing about
holiness or actually being a Christian.

If looking at the Bible is
not good enough, let’s just look at the facts, discipleship partners has failed
and is failing. Look at the fall away rate around the movement. It is close to 80%
now. Even in LA there’s a near 90% fall away rate. (369 people were baptized in
and 337 people fell away in LA in 2015) So if it clearly is not working and it
did not work in the prior movement (because according to Kip, this was one of
the first things that was done away with with when the movement fell apart)
then why do we keep doing it? It is simple: it is the best way for leadership
to get indoctrination through the fellowship.

How many times are we told as
leaders we need to be people talking about the 5 Core Convictions, or the Crown
of Thorns Project, or Special Missions, or the GLC or who we need to delete
social media because they were marked or disfellowshipped in d times? Is this
really what needs to be talked about in our personal d times? Not holiness or
righteousness or faith or hope or love or other things that Christ actually
talked about? We don’t do discipleship partners because they work at keeping
people faithful, they work because we can keep the people indoctrinated with
our unique theology.

A Central
Leadership with a Central Leader vs. Autonomous congregations

“Throughout the Bible, the Israelites were at their strongest
with the Lord when they had a central leader: Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David. As
a matter of fact, the book of Judges says of those days when they did not,
“Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.” (Judges 21:25) In the New
Testament, Jesus is the leader of “the Movement!” Uniquely, when He ascends to
Heaven, Peter takes on this responsibility as “the apostle to the Jews” since
for the first seven years of Christianity only Jews became Christians.
Interestingly, after Paul became “the apostle to the Gentiles,” the leadership
of the movement by Acts 15 had passed to Jesus’ oldest half brother James. At
the Jerusalem Council, James, after listening to both sides of the circumcision
issue, gives his singular authoritative “judgment” which is then bound on all
the churches. (Acts 15:19-24) Even Paul after his missionary journeys reports
to James and submits to his direction. (Acts 21:24) The Mainline Church of
Christ and the ICOC do not believe in an authoritative central leader or
leadership. Sadly, autonomous churches only produce autonomous disciples. In
fact, in 2005, some of the most influential ICOC leaders came to me and begged
me to be on a “team of leaders” if I would only say that autonomy was “a matter
of opinion.” I said, “No. It is sin.” Since I disagreed with them, I was
labeled “divisive” which is what Jesus understood would happen if you preach
the truth. (Luke 12:51-53)”

As you said earlier in this
article, the Old Testament is richer in examples of the teaching of Centralized
Leadership with a Central Leader than the New Testament. That’s because the Old
Testament deals with the physical nation of Israel. The Israelites weren’t just
the people of God, they were an independent state. The centralized leadership
of the Old Testament was not just to help the Israelites stay close to God, but
also to enforce the laws of their nation. There are many things that
distinguishes the Old Covenant from the New Covenant, but I just want to talk
about one: The Holy Spirit.

“I will sprinkleclean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanseyou from all your impuritiesand from all your idols.26 I
will give you a new heartand put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your
heart of stoneand
give you a heart of flesh.27 And
I will put my Spiritin you and move you to follow my decreesand be careful to keep my laws.” Ezekiel 36:25-27

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you
another advocateto
help you and be with you forever—17 the
Spirit of truth.The
world cannot accept him,because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him,
for he lives with you and will be[c]in you.” John 14:16-17

“Jesus answered,“Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God
unless they are born of water and the Spirit.6 Flesh
gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b]gives birth to spirit.” John 3:5-6

“Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized,every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the
forgiveness of your sins.And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.39 The promise is for you and your childrenand for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God
will call.” Acts 2:38-39

Underneath the old covenant, every Israelite did
not have access to the Holy Spirit as Christians do today. In most instances,
though not all, it was only the leaders and the prophets who had this personal
access to the Holy Spirit. However, God does not deal with his people today the
way he dealt with his people in the Old Testament. God spoke mainly through the
leaders He appointed but today he speaks to us through Jesus Christ (Hebrews
1:1-2) Today every Christian has the indwelling of the Holy Spirit upon
repentance and baptism. If every repented baptized disciple has the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit why MUST we have a centralized leadership with a central
leader to tell us what to do? To tell us where we should plant churches. Who
tell us how much money we are to give for church plantings. Why do we need a leader’s
permission do make decisions in our lives? It seems as if we are putting a
middle man between the people and Jesus, between the people and the Holy
Spirit. I’m not saying that centralized leadership and a central leader is an
inherently evil thing but our
emphasis on a centralized leadership and a central leader deemphasizes the role
of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Also contrary to what we teach, after reading
through the book of Acts and the entire New Testament, I cannot come to the
same conclusion, as the movement does, that James was the leader of the first
century movement. James made one decision that impacted all the churches in the
30-year history of the book of Acts and somehow that makes him the sole leader
of the movement? I also cannot find any Scripture in the New Testament where
anyone in the New testament proclaim themselves as the leader of the movement,
not even Peter or Paul. So if no one ever claimed to be the leader of the
movement and Jesus left the Holy Spirit to guide us individually as Christians
then why do we have a leader that proclaims himself to this position? In
actuality I find more Scripture that no one should ever exalt themselves to the
leader of all the churches.

“Jesus called them together and said,“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the
Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over
them.43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among
you must be your servant,44 and
whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.45 For even the
Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve,and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:42-45

Jesus strictly says that we are not to lord
authority over one another and care about position and titles (Mark 10:35-41).
Yet in our movement, all we do is talk about the need for a centralized leader
system in order for Christianity to work. Wouldn’t Jesus (if anybody) give very
specific instructions on who, what, how, the church should be structured? He
spoke on so many things and yet he leaves out specific instruction on
centralized leadership and a central leader. We say we worship Jesus and not man, yet most of our doctrine does not come Jesus' mouth.

In our own article we say in one part that
central leadership is a matter of speaking where the Bible is silent and then
later on in the same article we that it is sin to be autonomous and not have
centralized leadership. Which is it?

“As for the interpretation of Scripture, I and the ICC
believe the opposite of Campbell: “Be silent where the Bible speaks and speak
where the Bible is silent.” In other words, we are free to practice or name
something as long as it does not contradict the Scriptures. (Genesis 2:19; 1
Corinthians 10:23) We are more than comfortable with the terms and practices of
Lead Evangelists, Women’s Ministry Leaders, and the authority of our Central
Leadership Council over all of the SoldOut Movement churches. Let us not
forget, the word “Bible” is not in the Bible, but we believe it is of God!”

“In fact, in 2005, some of the most influential ICOC leaders
came to me and begged me to be on a “team of leaders” if I would only say that
autonomy was “a matter of opinion.” I said, “No. It is sin.” Since I disagreed with them, I was
labeled “divisive” which is what Jesus understood would happen if you preach
the truth. (Luke 12:51-53)”

On one hand the Central
Leadership Council is a matter of speaking where the Bible the is silent, yet
on the other hand it is sin if we don’t have it.

It’s said that “Israel was at its strongest with
the Lord when they had a central leader: Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David” But if
we follow that parallel then that would make Kip the absolute leader of God’s
people just like Moses, Joshua, Samuel, & David with no one able to take him out but God. Therefore, like David, that would make Kip our king. The big
problem with that is that we already have a king, his name is Jesus. There is
only one other man on earth that has supreme spiritual authority over his
people like Kip does, and that’s the Pope. And even the Pope gets elected! This
is absurd! Not even Jesus exalted himself over God’s people (Philippians
2:6-8; Mark 10:45)

Perhaps you could make a case for a Centralized
Leadership but even our modern day centralized leadership does not operate like
the one we see in the book of Acts. These guys got together once in Acts 15 to
make a decision on doctrinal matters. Our current centralized leadership meets
a couple times a year in an expensive hotel to make decisions about where to
plant churches, who to send, and how much money everyone else is to raise to
support these church plantings. All opinion matters. None to do with Biblical
church issues. If the World Sector Leaders and Crown of Thorns Council wanted
to be like the centralized leadership of the Bible theses guys would get together
and discuss the erroneous doctrinal issues in the movement such as Speaking
where the Bible is Silent for a whole group of people, the nature of compulsive
giving in contribution and Special Missions, and Divorce and Remarriage (Mark
10:11-12; Luke 16:18). But then again if they did that some of our leaders
would be disqualified from leadership. So does our current centralized
leadership serve itself or serve the people? Do they not trust us enough to
actually pull together and see the world evangelized in this generation? Are
they so afraid that someone will actually point out a flaw in them or the system that has implemented doctrines and techniques to keep this from
happening any longer?

The reality is that we do not need a centralized
leadership to tell us where to plant churches, how much money to raise, and who
to send to evangelize the world in this generation. “But there has to be leadership
right? Without leadership how can we be unified?” We can certainly be unified
in Christ. As we say, “If I gave everything up for Jesus and you gave
everything up for Jesus then we have everything in common.” See we can be
unified. The only reason we enforced
centralized leadership so heavily though is because we’re trying to make
everyone uniform. We want every disciple to go through the same studies
before and after baptism. We want every church to have the same methodology of
discipleship. We want every disciple to look, act, and talk the same. There can
be no divergent here. The centralize leadership that we say is of God is not
for the sake of unity but for the sake of uniformity.

The
Evangelization of the Nations in this Generation

This is our favorite one. Matthew 28:18-20. This
is our vision. This is our plan. This is what we are all about. This is what separates
us from every other church in the world. But does it really?

From the Biblical Differences article:

“The dream of the
evangelization of the nations in THIS generation.
This vision to change the world was rejected, because many ICOC teachers wrongly
concluded that this was one of the primary reasons for bitterness in the ICOC.”

From Mike Taliferro’s
article:

“For instance, in defense of his departure,
he says that, “I became convinced that the ICOC, for the most part,
that I was affiliated with was no longer a movement, whose dream was to
evangelize the world in our generation.”I’d like to state for the record that
I do not know a single evangelist or elder in the ICOC who has renounced this
dream. In fact, we are still taking up millions of dollars for mission work
around the world. We are still actively building up our churches in over 150
countries.Africa, for instance,
has a 30 year plan that begins with the cities and ends with the villages. ICOC
churches have planted nearly 100 churches in the last four years. Yes, we
hit a very difficult patch in 2003. It was very challenging. But most of us did
not cut and run during the direst time in our history. While some ran off and
started “new movements” simply so that they could be in charge once again, most
of us stayed with the churches that we began and did not desert “the army of
God” that was still fighting in the field. We are still giving our lives to
evangelize the world, and we want to do it in our generation. If it takes
longer, so be it. The Holy Spirit is in charge. But we all want to see it
happen in our generation.

Of course, this begs a question. Since the
Portland Movement so often talks about winning the world in one generation,
well, hasn’t Kip had one generation already to do it? Didn’t he start trying in
1979 inBoston? It seems to me
that after 30 years he is back to square one. Since you guys are so set on
World evangelization taking only one generation, then why is it taking Kip so
long? It appears that Kip will need to try a second time to accomplish his
goal, and it will take Kip himself at least two generations to do the job. So,
why are you so critical of us? We in the ICOC have no idea how long it will
take to evangelize the world, but we are committed to doing it in our generation.
Please understand that the dream is very much alive in the ICOC. In fact, we
are the ones who stood faithful during the tough times in order to see that
dream come true.”

Someone is lying again. What the ICOC claims and what we
say the ICOC claims are two different things. Again, I’ve never stepped foot
inside an ICOC but I do know that the church that got planted by the ICOC in
Eugene already has a plan to plant a church in Corvallis. I’m not seeing what
we are saying about them.

So why the press for accomplishing this in one generation?
It’s simple: By saying this generation it creates a sense of urgency. Urgency
can be used to motivate people to give as much money as they can, and even
sometimes more than they can, to meet the need of the hour. By saying this
generation, we put a deadline on Jesus’ word. It’s like having a due date for
your homework. You better get it done on time or else.

Also by stressing a deadline for the Great Commission, it
gives us a timeless excuse to have as many Special Missions Contributions as the leadership would see fit. In regards to Special Missions, most of the money doesn’t
even go to the missionaries. I’ve sent several missionaries out from Eugene and
in each case they were responsible for making their 20x Special Missions
Contribution plus come up with an extra $1,000 to support themselves once they
arrived to their mission field. Now if we, back home, are raising money to
support our missionaries, then why are they raising money for themselves? And
that begs the question, where do these millions of dollars go anyway?

Secondly, let’s be real clear about what this “Core
Conviction” really means. It doesn’t mean the goal is to evangelize the world
in this generation, it means WE want to evangelize the world in this generation.
Do not be confused. This is not about fulfilling Jesus’ dream; this is about
fulfilling Kip’s dream to be the hero. If this was about Jesus’ dream then we
would gladly do whatever it took to work with other disciples outside the
movement to see the world won. But that’s not what we do. In Kip’s own words,
he believes there are thousands of faithful disciples still in the ICOC. Why do
we never hear about them in the good news email? I've never seen a CAICC bulletin that had any good news from those thousands of faithful disciples in the ICOC. It's because Kip has to be in
charge. ICOC and other disciples have offered to work with Kip time and time
again but he always backs out because he has to be in charge.

We could care less what other
disciples around the world are doing. If they are not with us in the movement
then they just are not getting the job done right? Wrong! This “Core
Conviction” creates in every disciple in the movement a sense of
self-righteousness. We say that this is what makes a different. We boast about
worldly things like our plan for world evangelism. “We have a plan for World
Evangelism,” we say. “Look at OUR Crown of Thorns Project and look at how much
WE accomplished in such a short time!” “As it is, youboastin your arrogant schemes. All suchboasting is evil.” James 4:16 and
“So then, no moreboasting about human leaders! All
things are yours,” 1 Corinthians 3:21
As disciples in the movement we boast more about our leaders than anyone else.
Just because we try to put a “Holy Spirit” or “To God be the glory” doesn’t
mean we’re actually giving God glory.

Do not be deceived. Just look at the stats. In
2012 the movement boast 40 churches.

“Globally,
in five years, the SoldOut Movement is not merely adding but multiplying daily,
as the Lord has established through plantings and the gathering of remnant
groups some 40 churches in 19 nations! Excitingly, this summer new SoldOut
Discipling Movement churches will be planted in Boston, Mexico City, Orlando,
Paris and San Francisco!”

Now look at where we are in 2016

“We now mark the beginning of
God’s new movement with the planting of the City of Angels Church in May 2007
by the 42 sold-out disciples from Portland. Therefore, in the SoldOut
Movement’s short eight year history, God has spread His new movement to build
61 churches with 4,000 disciples with almost 6,000 in attendance on Sundays in
31 nations on all six populated continents of the world!”

From
year 1 to year 5 we went from “1” church to 40 churches and then from year 5 to
year 8 we went from 40 churches to 61 churches. It appears the movement is
slowing down. That’s the problem with inflating your stats to make a big deal
about what you are doing. You have to keep inflating your stats, otherwise
someone will come along, analyze the number and actually find the truth.
Doesn’t it seem odd that we have more churches in the movement today than seven
years ago but today we give more money for special missions than we did seven
years ago? The fact is the numbers are telling us that we are not evangelizing
the nations in this generation. The numbers are telling us that the ICOC is
doing a better job at evangelizing the nations in this generation.

The
Bottom Line About The “Five Core Convictions”

Early
on in the new movement, there were no five core convictions. These were
implemented when people who came to the new movement from the ICOC started
going back to the ICOC. Once the ICOC got back on its feet from all the damage
the Kip caused, they started to grow and be vibrant again so people could not
tell the difference. We needed to stop the bleeding. So we began to stress
differences, however small they were (or has the research shows, doesn’t even
exist).

The
five core convictions are not necessarily wrong but they also aren’t necessary.
The fact is that the ICC does not preach a gospel-centered message. We preach
the gospel + the five core convictions. The gospel + first principles. The
gospel + [insert any doctrine that makes the ICC different than other
churches]. When did the gospel stop being good enough to take to the lost
world? Here’s how we know the Five Core Convictions aren’t necessary: Read
through the book acts and find the top five themes in book. I’m sure we all
would come up with five different things but none of us (except Kip) would come
up with the Five Core Convictions. That’s because it’s not necessary for
salvation or to evangelize the world. The five core convictions serve one
purpose: to make our church seem better than every other church, so as to keep
as many people in the movement as possible.

The Corporate structure of the Movement that makes sinful leadership normal

The second major foundational error I see, is our movement’s
definition of Centralized Leadership. In our movement the Central Leadership,
the World Sector Leaders and Crown of Thorns Council, make all decisions for
the movement. No church gets planted without them knowing. No money gets raised
for missions without their approval. All major decisions come back to the
Central Leadership and mainly back to Kip McKean. Again I start with a
statement so no one is confused about what I believe. This is the statement: I
believe in Central Leadership. It can be useful but currently our model of
Central Leadership does not represent the the first century church nor does it
portray a good exegesis of Old Testament theology. Unfortunately, our form of
Central Leadership structure more closely resembles the Catholic Church. (I
say resembles because I do not believe we are modeled exactly like the Catholic
Church, yet)

The
reasoning for our movement’s structure of Centralized leadership comes mostly
from Old Testament examples. Moses was God’s appointed leader for the
Israelites during the Exodus. When Moses was about to die, he asks God to
appoint a leader so the people will not be like sheep without a shepherd
(Numbers 27:15-17) Joshua is selected and leads God’s people to conquer the
Promised Land. After Joshua dies, the Israelites go through some dark periods
during the time of the judges. The best way to sum up the book of Judges is the
final verse of the book. “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did
as they saw fit” Judges 21:25. Saul is selected as king and after him
Israel has its most prosperous time under King David. King Solomon led the
kingdom through more prosperous times but after him the nation splits into two
kingdoms until eventually the entire nation is taken into captivity.

Now we have
been taught that we are “a Bible church and not just a New Testament church”.
Therefore, since we are a Bible church, while we are no longer bound by “the
law” we can still look to the Old Testament for Biblical principles to live by.
Which is true and what I believe. The problem comes when we begin to structure
the movement like the Old Testament nation of Israel. The church and the nation of Israel are not the same thing.
We begin, and have already begun, to go down a slippery slope which will lead
to legalism and placing man before Jesus. When we structure our movement by
improperly placing the church as the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, Kip
McKean, in effect, becomes our king. The obvious problem with this is Jesus is
our king, not Kip. You of course are saying that this is outrageous and Kip is
not our king. And I have said that and preached that as well. But let’s
investigate a few questions. Have you ever intentionally baptized someone that
doesn’t believe everything we believe as outline in the First Principles bible
studies which is written by Kip? “Well of course not! That would be
dissentious” Would it? Who would you be dissenting against, Jesus or against Kip’s
theology? Is it really necessary to believe in world evangelism in a generation
to receive salvation? If so, then Kip would have to get rebaptized because he
has gone on record as saying that they weren’t even thinking about world
evangelism in a generation until after a few years in Boston in the 80’s. 10
years after he got baptized. Does counting the cost to make sure someone
believes in world evangelism helps them stay faithful to Jesus or stay faithful
to the movement? What do you think about someone who says they are not giving
the full 20x for Special Missions? Do feel like they are in sin? Why? Because
they’re greedy? Are you really greedy because you can’t pay two weeks of your
salary that you are mandated to give to be a part of the church? Can a church
leader intentionally not do what central leadership directed them do and still
lead a church in our movement? (The answer is no) Why not? Why can’t I make an
informed decision that sending 25x to LA for Special Missions is not right
especially considering that we here in Eugene can’t afford a place to meet for
our own worship services? Why do we use Scriptures like Deuteronomy 17:12-13 “Anyone who shows contemptfor the judge or for the priest who stands ministeringthere to theLordyour God is to be put to death.You must purge the evil from Israel.13 All the people will hear and be afraid, and will not be
contemptuous again.”
to
disfellowship people from the church? To bring this Scripture into the New
Testament church, which is bad exegesis, is to intentionally kill them spiritually
so that the rest of the church will be afraid and never disagree with
leadership again.(i.e. withhold
Salvation from them. Which brings up a whole host of issues such as to can the
church even withhold salvation from someone if we believe it is God who saves
and not us?) So again, I bring up the point that a bad exegesis of the
Old Testament makes Kip our king and not Jesus. The church is not the nation
of Israel, we are spiritual Israel. And our spiritual king (and actual king) is
Jesus. We do not need a human king anymore. But in our current model Kip, and
his teachings, are our king whether we realize it or not.

Another problem with Kip being our
king is that we run into a deep theological issue. Because Moses was the leader
for all of God’s people. David was the leader of all God’s people. Are we
saying that Kip is supposedly to be the leader of all Christians everywhere?
And if we say that then we are essentially saying that everyone outside our
movement is not saved because in the Old Testament God’s people were commanded
to live as one nation together. We cannot say he’s the leader of God’s movement
without saying that he’s the leader for all God’s people. And if we are saying
that he not is the leader of all God’s people then we have to acknowledge and
behave as if there are other Christians out there besides those in “God’s
movement”. If you think we already do that, try telling your church leader
you’re going to worship with the ICOC for the next month just because you want
to and see his response. We publicly acknowledge Christian in other fellowships
but when was the last time we actually cooperated with anybody outside of the
movement? We don’t because we don’t really think people are as spiritual as us.

One reason why our central leadership
is structured like the Catholic Church is because they don’t just make
decisions for us, they also make definitions for us. Take for instance: world
evangelism and autonomy. Our movement’s tagline is “the Evangelization of the
Nations in this Generation”. But let’s be clear: We don’t want world evangelism
in this generation. Wewant to
evangelize the world in this generation. Meaning, it’s not important to us that
the world is evangelized in this generation, it is important to us that we are
the ones who evangelize the world. How do we know this? We acknowledge baptisms
in the ICOC (so as long as they eventually join us) but we don’t acknowledge
ICOC church plantings in the ICOC. Why not? Because we don’t really know that
they are making disciples right? No. It’s because it is not our central
leadership’s joy that the world gets evangelized, it is the central leaderships
joy that we are the ones who evangelize the world. We are ambitious to see the
world won, so as long as we are the ones doing the winning. We automatically
assume that if we aren’t doing it then it’s not being done, which is the reason
for a growing multiple of Special Missions every year.

Autonomy is sin according to our
beliefs. But that interpretation of Scriptures is based off of experience in
the ministry rather than an actual Bible teaching. In the 70s, our brother Kip
was a part of an American movement within the Churches of Christ called Campus
Advance. When Kip and his contemporaries were just a campus ministers they
would get hired at a Churches of Christ and build dynamic campus ministries.
The norm in those churches were to have fired up Campus ministries and, at
best, a lukewarm older ministry. This was all led by a guy named Chuck Lucas.
From Chuck, Kip learned the practice of counting the cost before someone was
baptized, accountability through prayer partners (which we now know as
discipling partners) amongst other good tools for ministry. Kip was hired at
the Lexington Church of Christ in 1979 where for the first time, he called the
entire congregation to be totally committed (which we now call Sold Out).
Amazing growth happened in Boston and Boston was able to plant other churches
with the same model of building churches with only totally committed disciples.
This became known as the Boston Movement and later the ICOC (International
Church of Christ). A lot of us look back at the ICOC and think that it was just
by building churches of sold out disciples that the ICOC grew from 1 church to
over 400 churches in under 25 years. But two things had a major impact on the
dramatic growth that Kip often downplays. Number one was in the mid 80s when
Chuck Lucas stepped out of leadership because of sin. This led to nearly 3000
trained disciples orphaned that found their way into the ICOC. Having 3000
trained leaders all of sudden would definitely lead to great growth. Secondly,
many of the churches in the ICOC were reconstructed instead of planted. A
reconstruction happened when a church wanted to join the the ICOC. The Boston
church would send their trained minister to lead the church that wanted to
join. In return that church would send its current leader to Boston to be
trained and sent back out. This was in stark contrast to the Churches of Christ
which were closing many of its doors due to lack of church growth. Kip
attributed this dramatic expansion to the influence of being an overseeing
evangelist. This is when autonomy became sin. Autonomy was not sin when Kip
first got baptized because autonomy was all he knew. Autonomy as defined by our
central leadership means self governing. That is actually good definition for
autonomy. The problem becomes when we start attributing selfishness with
autonomy. When we start saying leaders just want to be autonomous because they
don’t support world missions and just want to run their own kingdom. That is a
problem. Just because someone is self governing doesn’t mean they are selfish.
In some sense, we need to be autonomous because if we are always dependent upon
some else to take care of us we will always be a burden to the body. But our
central leadership has told us that autonomy is sin and we can’t be a movement
if we are autonomous. The Scriptures and history tell us otherwise.

In the first century church, there
was local autonomy and all the churches still worked together. For instance,
Jerusalem had no part in Paul and Barnabas being sent out on a missionary
journey from Antioch. Paul did not go to Iconium, Lystra, Cyprus, and Derbe at
the direction direction of the apostles in Jerusalem. As a matter of fact, the
first time that Jerusalem even finds out about the churches in these church
plantings was at the council in Acts 15:4.

At this point I digress a minute to
show another huge difference the Jerusalem of our movement and the Jerusalem of
the book of Acts. In our movement LA is our “Jerusalem” based on the Scripture
of Acts 1:8. LA has the most members, it has the biggest staff, and the largest
contribution. Eventually all of our most talented young and veteran disciples
will go to LA to be trained because Jerusalem is to be a model for the other
churches. Also in our movement, our Jerusalem makes all the decisions for the
rest of the churches. This is far from the Jerusalem of Scriptures. The
Jerusalem of the Scriptures is a poor church, not the church with the biggest
payroll. Jerusalem was so poor that the disciples were not even eating let
alone have enough money to pay all its leaders (Acts 6:1) In Jerusalem, the
apostles did not even make all the decision for Jerusalem. When the Hellenistic
were being overlooked in the distribution of food, we are told that the
apostles chose 7 men to delegate this responsibility to. But this is not true.
The apostles did not choose anybody. The
disciples chose the 7 and presented them to the apostles, not the other way
around. (Acts 6:1-6) This may seem minute but when the Scriptures are
retold to us as they are not written, our modern day apostles (Central
Leadership) gets to hold all the power within their hands. The church in
Jerusalem did not oversee the planting of every church in the Book of Acts like
our modern day Jerusalem does. Read the Scriptures carefully and you’ll find
that many times the apostles did not know a church had been started else. Look
at Phillip in Samaria (Acts 8:14) Barnabas explaining to the apostles all the
work Paul did in Damascus (Acts 9:26-28) Paul explaining to the apostles about
the churches that were planted among the Gentiles (Acts 15:4) Often times, the
apostles had no idea that these things were happening.

We often are told that Jerusalem
was the center of the movement because of the big council that took place in
Acts 15. But the reason why the council took place at Jerusalem was because the
false doctrine had gone out from Jerusalem (Acts 15:1) This was a not a meeting
of every church leader in the movement, this was council of the apostles and
elders from Jerusalem and Antioch, that’s it. The reason the letter was sent
throughout the rest of the churches was because of Antioch’s influence of those
churches, not Jerusalem’s. Paul takes the letter back to the churches he
planted. Churches that Jerusalem did not plant. If we were to live in the Book
of Acts then we would not be under the direction of the leadership of our
modern day Jerusalem 24/7. But I digress..

Another example of local autonomy
is the diversity of the disciples. In Jerusalem the disciples were taught to
keep the law as Christians while Paul taught people that they did not need to
keep the law Acts 21:20-22. We’ve taught improperly that all the disciples
were taught the same thing everywhere in every church. (1 Corinthians 4:17) But
this Scriptures indicates what Paul
taught the same thing everywhere in every church. This is does not mean
that every preacher taught the same thing everywhere. There were disciples of
John preaching about the Messiah but who knew nothing about the Holy Spirit
(Acts 19:1-5). There were preachers who preached about Jesus but knew nothing
of Paul’s teachings (Acts 18:24-28) It’s clear that the Holy Spirt, not the
apostles in Jerusalem sent Phillip to preach the word in Azotus (Acts 8:39-40).
Peter at the direction of the Holy Spirit was sent to Joppa to convert the
first Gentile convert (Acts 10:9-48). All these are examples of people
preaching in places not at the direction of a central leadership. We would call
this autonomy. But this is not sin. This is what it is: Preaching the word.
Just because an overseeing evangelist doesn’t tell you do it, doesn’t mean your
selfish or want to build your own kingdom. I understand at this point I've lost many of you. Autonomy is a huge no-no in the movement. We never entertain the idea of autonomy even if Jesus himself came down and told us we don't Centralized Leadership. I didn't want believe it at first as well, but I was at a crossroads because the practices of church I saw in the book of Acts was different than the practices I saw in the our movement. I had a dilemma. I could continue to search the Scripture to reinforce what I already believed or just let the Bible speak.

But how can we expect to succeed as
a movement if we don’t have Centralized Leadership? The same way every other
movement has survived from the beginning of time: through respect and
cooperation. The First Century church did not have a Central Leader. (Our
Central Leadership can make a case for James as the leader but he was not
making decisions for every church throughout the world because he did not know
about every church throughout the world) The Civil Rights Movement did not have
a Centralized Leadership with a Central Leader making decisions for every
minority across America. Neither did the Women’s Suffrage Movement, nor the
Reformation Movement, nor the American Revolution and the list goes on. All
these movements have key contributors but not one defined leader making decisions
for every member of their movement. This is why we look like the Catholic
Church. In the Catholic Church, the Pope does make all decisions for the
Church. He decides the doctrine and interprets the Scriptures for them. His
Central Leadership is responsible for advising him and the execution of the
decisions he makes. All with the goal of keeping Catholics, Catholic. All of
the decisions our Central Leader makes is made with the goal of keeping the
members of the movement in the movement. Sadly though, the our movement is a
church that became a business, but is now just a business that it trying to
retains its properties of a church.

One Scripture that was said to me when I left was Ephesians 4:3 "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." "Stay in the movement and stay unified. Leaving will not produce unity." But movements are not the agent of unity. The Holy Spirt is the agent of unity. It is our job to keep peace. Keep the relationship even if we have fundamental differences so as long as the differences are not salvation issues. And every issue in this article is not. We can have differing views of church governance and still be unified.

Let me reiterate: I do believe in
Centralized Leadership and even like the idea of having a Central Leader but I
do not want to be Catholic. Why can’t we have freedom in our movement to do as
what we believe as, disciples and leaders, are the best for our cities? Do we
not all have the Holy Spirit. This is just not the case. The event that sparked
this journey for me was caused when a decision was made for one of our sisters
to move to LA to be our World Sector Leader’s nanny before it was discussed
with us or her. I know it was decided because my overseeing evangelist
accidentally told me it was happening because he assumed that was the issue I was
calling for on that particular evening. Now mind you, this sister was currently
leading a house church in Corvallis and was scheduled to move closer to Eugene
at the end of year to help my wife and I at the University of Oregon. My wife
had just given birth to our second daughter in October and needed help managing
the ministry and taking care of our two daughters under two years of age. All
of sudden we were expected to send this sister to LA at the drop of hat. When
we were first asked about it, I asked if she could move down in February or
March after my wife had fully recovered from having the second baby. This was
met with objection and I was told that this would be best for the sister
moving, as in the World Sector Leader’s own words said “this is the best sister
we have in all our churches.” I spoke with my wife about it and she was very
upset about this. She had already sent out three of her female Bible Talk
Leaders earlier in the year, including our administrator, and was already
feeling stretched pretty thin between the two kids, working on the graduate
program for ICCM, and discipling 9 women in the church. This sister was going
to help offload some of this work.

When I called our World Sector
Leader a second time to discuss the possibility of her coming down in February
or March again, this time I got a 30-minute lecture about how I don’t enjoy
making leaders and that if I enjoyed making leaders then I wouldn’t need this
sister because I would just make more. (It’s ironic to me how we helped this
sister become the “best sister we have in all the churches” in one phone
conversation, to the couple that doesn’t enjoy making leaders in the next). I
reluctantly gave in because I did not want to keep going in circles and I could
barely get a word in either way. So we got our hearts behind the plan. But we
thought she was going to move at the end of December. However, I found out in
the pre-service huddle of our November 29th worship service that
this sister would be leaving by December 10th to get to LA by 13th
to place membership at LA’s Christmas Service. No one communicated the plan
with us. So we had to scramble to find someone to replace her in her apartment
so that the sisters could pay rent for December and January.

That’s not right. Shouldn’t we have
cooperated together to find a plan that was mutually beneficial for all parties
involved? Why do the sisters here in Eugene need to scramble to donate plasma
for rent because their roommate was asked/told to go move to LA to be the nanny
of a World Sector Leader who’s kids are 7 years old and 3 years old? Shouldn’t
the woman with two daughters under two years old get help with childcare before
the woman with older children? Does LA really not have one person in their
entire 900-person congregation who can fill this role? But according to our
model of Central Leadership I’m the one who needs to get on board with what
Central Leadership has decided. Because our Central Leadership is essentially
our kings whose decrees cannot be overrun. Our current Corporate structure make situations like this common.But this is what our Corporate Leadership structure does, it makes sinful leadership so normal that we think evil is good and good is evil (Isaiah 5:20) When I brought this case up even to my disciple, he said it happens to him to and that’s just the way it has to be. No it is not the way it has to be. We could actually be Christian and use the whole Bible in our relationships and not just Hebrews 13:17. If you want to continue to subject yourself to it then be my guest. But I actually care about a life beyond this world and will trust in Jesus’ words and not man’s interpretation of Jesus’ words.
The problem is not the World Sector Leader call and demanded a person to be sent to him . The problem is that a situation like this is normal. This is the culture of the movement. And the culture is produced by its foundation. When I was in ICCM, my graduate thesis was going to be on the effects of culture and conviction. The reality is that culture shapes our behavior more than what we believe. The culture of the movement needs to change if it is to continue. And the only way the change the culture is to change the foundation
Let’s cooperate together. Let’s let
the evangelist and local leadership have some say in major decision that happen
in their congregation. Unlike the Catholics we don’t have a 1700 year cultural
history that will keep people Catholic through a few isolated mess ups. We have
35 year history full of division and drama. We need to reform our ways
otherwise this is not going to sustain itself. Kip as king, is already on his
second generation of evangelizing the world in a generation. I would like to
work with my Central Leadership not work for my Central Leadership. I want to
be a part of the Movement, not pawn on Central Leadership’s chess board

The fact of the matter is, how the
culture of the movement is the exact culture Jesus did not want in the church.
Consider Matthew 23:5-12 about Jesus warning his disciples not to be like the
Pharisees.

“Everything
they do is done for people to see:They make their
phylacteries[a]wide and
the tassels on their garmentslong;6 they love the place of honor at banquets and the most
important seats in the synagogues;7 they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces
and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.

8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have
one Teacher, and you are all brothers.9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father,and he is in
heaven.10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah.11 The greatest among you will be your servant.12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those
who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Jesus tell the disciples plainly do not be like
the Pharisees. Everything they do is for people to see (Good News Email, CAICC
bulletin, Livestream GLC events, etc.) Verse 5-6 sounds exactly like a GLC
event to me. How many of the ICCM students have impossible prayers to be
appointed as an Evangelist or Women’s Ministry Leader by the GLC? But this
doesn’t even hit at the root of the issue.

Verse
8-10 Jesus tells his apostles, not to be called Rabbi, father, and instructor.
We know he is not talking about literally because Paul said he was a father in
the faith. (1 Corinthians 4:15) Jesus interprets his words in the passage.
They do not need another authoritative Teacher because Jesus is their teacher.
Jesus has all authority (Matthew 28:18) All authority has been
given to Jesus. Therefore, the apostles could not exert absolute spiritual
authority over one another. They were brothers. No one of them have authority
over the rest. Peter could not tell John what he had to do. Thaddeus was not obligated to get advice/permission from Matthew. Jesus commands them not to have these kinds of
relationships where one person is “over the other in the Lord”. He admonishes
them that if any of them tried to exalt themselves over the others that they
will be humbled. Yet in the movement, every point of every lesson is about
getting into a position of authority and leadership. We live our daily lives in
direct opposition to the Scriptures.

We
left because we saw that we were becoming Pharisees as well. Of the movement
can be said the exact same things of the Pharisees of Matthew 15:6-9:

“Thus
you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about
you:

8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,but
their hearts are far from me.9 They worship me in vain;their
teachings are merely human rules.’[c]”

Our traditions about the Bible are just as important as the Bible
itself. This is the danger of Centralized Leadership. The people no longer know
where the Scripture end and leadership’s opinions begin. The traditions of
discipleship partners is linked synonymously with dsicipling itself, so much so
that if discipleship partners were done away with today in the ICC, no one
would know how to practice discipling. The tradition of Special Missions is
linked synonymously with sacrificial giving that most disciples don’t even know
that the majority of the giving by the disciples in the Bible were given to the
poor. The tradition of Central Leadership is linked with unity that no one
really knows how to be unified without it.

Our central leadership is directly against what Jesus
teaches in his gospel. We place one man over another man and still another. “If
you see the poor oppressedin a
district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things;
for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher
still.” Ecclesiastes 5:8. The leadership is not righteous
because it cannot be righteous. It does not have a righteous foundation. Our
model for leadership is structured exactly like corporation, equipped with a
CEO and everything.

Just compare our
leadership with Jesus’ leadership. What happened when people left Jesus’
ministry:

“From this time many of his disciplesturned back and no longer followed him.

67 “You do not
want to leave too, do you?”Jesus asked the Twelve.” John 6:66-67

When people left Jesus’ ministry he let them walk away.
What happens when someone leaves the movement. First we get desperate and try
to appeal to their sentiments. “We’re family. We just love you and care about
you.” If that doesn’t work, and the person is resistant then we find every
ounce of sin and character deficiency of the person and use it as means to
discredit anything that comes out of the person’s mouth. Then if that doesn’t
work, here comes the disfellwoshipment and marking. At what point is our Central Leadership going to stop and ask
themselves, “Maybe people get divisive and contemptuous because they are a
product of our culture? Maybe Jesus was right when he said that a tree is
recognized by its fruit? Maybe we have to mark or disfellowship people so much is
because of a problem in our foundation?” They will never come to that
conclusion though. They cannot come to that conclusion. That would be to admit
that they got some things wrong in the beginning. Why would I, an evangelist
all of sudden leave the ministry? Why would I rather be jobless than in the
ministry? Why would I rather be poor than with my comfortable ministry job? LA
was ready to bend over backwards for us. They were ready to pay us full time and
let me still commute to Oregon to finish my Psychology Degree here at the
University of Oregon. Why would my wife choose not live close to her parents
who would have help her with our children? Oh that’s right, because I don’t
have deep convictions. Because many have told the disciples here in Eugene
in the church I was leading that I’m not a disciple. It’s always been odd to me
that the leadership exposes all the sin of someone after they leave the
movement. Didn’t you know about these things before I walked away. Why are they
just coming to the light now, if it was so damaging? Because as long as I was
in the movement I would make the movement look bad. The very sin that was used
to discredit me here in Eugene was the same sin the my discipler told me not to
let out into the church. Now he will be one of the one telling it to the church.
Manipulation at its finest.

Do not be deceived disciples of the SoldOut Discipling Movement.
Your central leadership does not serve you, you serve them. That’s how it is
designed to work. Exactly like a corporation. They even teach it. Disciple=
Christian= Saved =Worker. When you got baptized you became an employee of the
church. That’s why you tag every weekend. That’s why you attend so many
meetings. That’s why you give so much of your money. Just like a Corporation
owns its employees, so the movement owns the disciples. You will never make
another decision again in your life without getting advice/permission.

Sadly, the problem is not even the people. It is the system
itself. It is greatly flawed. You can only operate like this for so long until
people start to catch on and walk away.

The Bottom Line About The Leadership Structure of the
Movement

The
ICC is a church that became a business and is now just a business trying to
retain the properties of a church. The movement structured like a corporation
with the disciples being the employees. Unfortunately, this corporate like
structure comes complete with its corporate like sins. Greed, self ambition,
slander, gossip, manipulation, deceit, dishonesty, pride and dissention.
Eventually everyone leaves this structure. The problem with using the world as
a model to structure the church is that you cannot mix the two. “For
what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?” 2 Corinthians 6:14. The advantage of the corporate model is that it is easily replicable. You can
take it all over the world if you. Make a disciple of the corporation who makes
a disciple of the corporation, and so on. The problem with it though is that it
is worldly and never going to sustain itself in God’s Kingdom. “Where
is the wise person?Where is the
teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age?Has not God made foolishthe wisdom of the world?” 1
Corinthians 1:20 When you incorporate Christianity, you end up making
people loyal to the Corporation not Jesus Christ.

A
Movement Built on Money

I first want to start by making a
statement so there is no confusion in what I believe and what I stand for. The
statement is this: I believe in Special Missions and I believe we should
take up a Special Missions every year.
Now with that being said, my issue is this: My issue is not that we give
Special Missions, my issue is how
we give Special Missions. Under our current model we do not give Special
Missions, we pay Special Missions.

This is currently
how Special Missions work: The Crown of Thorn Council, which includes our World
Sector Leaders, our movement’s Shepherds, our movement administrators, and few
other selected evangelist and Women’s Ministry Leaders, come together assess
where our movement is at and makes plans for the future. Based on their
judgment, the multiple for our Special Missions is decided and how many times
we will have Special Missions in a year is decided. As a church leader, I have
no say in this decision. I usually find out a few days before it’s public
knowledge. In the twenty two months I have led a church, we have had 3 Special
Missions and another 3 Special Missions scheduled for 2016. I have no say in
this decision. The amount each church is expected to give in the Spring is
usually the multiple of you October weekly contribution average of the previous
year. The Fall Missions is usually based off your June contribution average.
(This is also why we usually have pledge drives in the movement around January
and after the GLC. This way we will give our Special Missions based on our new
pledges to ensure we “blow out” our Special Missions goal) The only flexibility
I have as a church leader is the ability to correct any incorrect reporting of
our average’s during the months our averages are based off of. (We are required
to send monthly reporting to LA every month) I have no say in the total
multiple we raise or the multiple we send. And we always send everything except
a 1x to meet out weekly needs. There is a Biblical issue with this model.

The
Biblical issue with this is threefold. First, our current model is not how the
first century church did things. Secondly, to say we are imitating the the
first century church is not true. Thirdly, the model only leads people pay
Special Missions under compulsion and not giving generously no matter how good
hearted they are and how we as leaders try to spin it.

To the first point, this is just as
simple as it sounds. I think we all know this, that Special Missions is not in
the Bible. And this is usually where we point to Old Testament examples of
taking up a collection for the building of the temple or tabernacle, or we hang
on to one of our core convictions. Mainly, “speaking where the Bible is
silent”. This would be all well and good if that is what the first century
church did. The problem with using the Old Testament examples of building up
the temple or tabernacle is that these were one time collections only, not
annual collections. The apostles did not seem to use David’s example of
providing money for the building of the temple for the collecting of money for
missions, so why do we use David’s and other Old Testament examples every year
to raise Special Missions? Because we have
to hit the goal. So we look for examples are great financial sacrifice
and say, “This is what they did in the Bible, so this is what we need to do.”
Which sounds great, but The Israelites were not being told what they were
expected to give year after year. When David collected money for the building
of the temple, the people gave willingly without someone telling them what they
were going to give (2 Chronicles 29:6) But the point is even if they were
commanded to give a certain amount every year in the Old Testament, this is not
what the apostles underneath the New Covenant did in the book of Acts.

Here’s the truth: The Movement has
no money. LA operates on line of credit. The money you give to Special Missions
does not go completely to Special Missions, it goes to pay off the line of credit the LA
church has ran up. Just look at the Bulletin that CAICC puts out. We raised 2.6
million dollars in 2015 to plant six churches. I know that the Sacramento
church only cost $23,000 to get started. So where did the $2,577,000? It
doesn’t take $500,000 to start a church. We didn’t send all that money to other
churches around the world. The LA church has run up it’s credit limit and our
Special Missions goes to pay down that credit. It’s shocking the kind of deceit
that happens in the movement.

Why did we have an impromptu 3x
Missions Contribution in February? Because LA was about run completely out of
money. The LA administrator sat down with Kip and explained to him that the LA
church would be completely out of money by January 15th. Luckily,
someone who I will keep anonymous, made a six figure donation in January to
keep the LA church going. Then a “generosity drive” in January in LA and 3x
Missions Contribution in February. That’s why we give Special Missions. Because
we have to hit the goal. Because there is no money in the movement, in
particularly LA.

Now anyone who’s knows their Bible
and is a movement minded leader has automatically thought of a few Scriptures
that show the apostles taking a collection and sending the money back to
Jerusalem. This speaks the second issue. These Scriptures, to them, makes it
clear that our model of Special Missions absolutely is modeled after the
Scriptures. I know these Scriptures because I have also mistakenly preached
these Scriptures in the wrong context as well. Some of these Scriptures are:
Acts 4:32-36; Romans 15:25-28; 1 Corinthians 16:1-4; 2 Corinthians 8-9; Acts
11:27-30. All these Scriptures, show Paul taking up a collection from the
churches and bringing the money back to Jerusalem to give to the apostles to
distribute. From that we can draw the conclusion that it is Biblical for us to
collect a Special Missions contribution and send to LA for our central
leadership to distribute. The one major flaw with this teaching is that the money Paul was collecting was for
benevolence not missions work. In fact, in the first century, the apostles
never took up any collections for the work of missions.

Contrary to what we have been
taught and have been teaching, the apostles were not concerned with raising
money for planting churches. They were too busy trying to meet the needs of the
local congregation, mainly in the distribution of food (Acts 6:1-7, 11:27-30).
The church in Jerusalem went through a famine, so many of the disciples did not
have food. Paul wrote letters and went from church to church to collect money
for the church in Jerusalem. The church in Jerusalem was a poor church. Quite
different than the “Jerusalem” of our movement, which by far has the biggest
weekly contribution. (LA’s weekly contribution is 25x the weekly contribution
of Eugene) The church is Jerusalem in the book of Acts was not the hub for the
financial decision making for the the other churches. In fact, the church in the Bible Jerusalem was at the mercy of the other churches. In all the Scriptures
mentioned above, money was being collected for benevolent purposes not for
planting churches. You may say, as I have preached before, that “we are
materially rich here in America and we need to support the spiritually poor all
over the world through raising missions.” Granted. And I believe that, but we
can’t use those Scriptures above to support that.

It is vitally important we
understand that the Scriptures and the practice in the first century church was
that nearly all the money being collected was for benevolent purposes not for
planting churches. Why is this so important? Because that means if a preacher,
like myself or any other movement minded leader, uses the Scriptures to say we
must give certain multiple of our weekly contribution for Missions then we are
no longer imitating the Scriptures. Paul says in multiple occasions that the
disciples gave what they decided to give, not what someone else told them to
give (Acts 11:29, 2 Corinthians 9:7)

So why did the disciples raise so
much money for helping the poor and not to planting churches? One reason is
that Jesus taught that if you don’t take care of the poor and needy, especially
amongst the believers, then you would go to hell! (Matthew 25:31-46). Being
benevolent is a important aspect of maintaining your salvation. When Paul talks about testing the sincerity of
your faith by comparing it with eagerness of others, he is not talking about
how willing we are to give to support missions but how willing we are to give
to support other brothers and sisters in need. Now some may say, like I have,
that the disciples that are risking their lives in third world countries need
our support through Special Missions and if you can do something to support
them but you don’t then you’re being greedy. And again, I believe that. But
then the support would be a benevolent offering not a mandatory payment of the
multiple of my weekly contribution through Missions giving. We need to make
sure we are differentiating between the two so as to make sure we are not
misappropriating funds. (Because that’s illegal).And it’s sad to say, but in this way, we are
not that different from most false doctrine churches. Most churches the
religious community give about 5-10% of their donations to local benevolence,
and in our our movement of churches, most of our churches give right around 10%
to local benevolence. (I exclude MERCY Worldwide payments from these numbers,
because we are required as a local church to give to MERCY Worldwide therefore
not making benevolent)

Anther reason why the disciples
could focus on giving benevolence is because, in the first century they did not need money to plant churches.
I know this doesn’t seem possible but if you read the book of Acts that’s
exactly what happened. So how were churches planted? Well usually through
persecution. The starting of new churches in other cities came as the result of
having to relocate due to persecution. (Acts 8:1; 14:1-6) Another way of
planting churches I discovered in the Book of Acts was that the people planting
churches went out on their own dime. Often times, when Paul got to a city he
had to work (1 Corinthians 18:1-4; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-10) Wouldn’t this be a
cheaper solution then raising millions of to plant a few churches a year? In
2015, according to bulletin published by the City of Angels church, we raised 2.6
million dollars and we planted 6 churches. Now I know for fact that, it doesn’t
cost $433,000 to start a church. The Eugene church, and many other churches in
the movement, won’t even take up that much money in over the next two years. So
we know that part of that 2.6 million dollars, and apparently an extremely
large part, was used to support churches that have already been planted. Which
means that even though we took up 20x and a 5x Special Missions contribution
for let’s say Sydney, Australia in 2014 we continued to raise money to support
them in 2015. But we aren’t just supporting Sydney year after year, we’re
supporting churches in North America, South America, Africa, and Europe year
after year. So even though we’re planting more churches, we, the people, are
sacrificing more and more money to support the the money we’ve already
supported. (I know, it sounds confusing. That’s how Central Leadership is able
to get away with it every year and that’s why we keep paying more and more
every year). You’ve probably heard it preached that to evangelize the world “we
need people and money” I know I’ve heard it. And I know I’ve preached it
because I heard it. But the first century church, which evangelize the world in
their generation (Colossians 3:6;23), did not seem to need money to evangelize
the world. “Those who trust in their riches will fall,but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf.”
Proverbs 11:28 I have come to believe that if we need money to
evangelize the world, that we will never evangelize the world because the world
has already evangelized us. And in our movement, sadly we are dependent upon
money to bring salvation to the world!

The
final issue I have with Missions, is that we don’t give Special Missions, we pay
Special Missions. To be clear, Central Leadership is not suggesting we do 20x
Missions in May, they are expecting us to do 20x Missions in May. So much so
that usually, Missions money is spent before Missions money is finished being
collected. Typically, if a person is giving something it is unexpected and
freely given. Meaning that the person has a say in what their gift will be.
This is what we see in the Book of Acts (Acts 11:29-30) But if I have no say in
what I am giving, then it’s not really my gift is it? If you tell me what to
give, then that becomes instruction. And if I’m just following instructions
then I am not giving anything, I am simply obeying what I was told to do. With
Special Missions, we are told what we are giving, and when we are giving. And
if we are being told we have to give, then we are giving under compulsion (2
Corinthians 9:7). The way Central Leadership gets away with this is because
they don’t tell individual members how much they are to give, Central
Leadership only instructs the entire church how much is expected of them to
give. Essentially our “Jerusalem” doesn’t care who gives what, but only that we
reach the overall goal assigned to us as a church by them. So if one person
gives 3x but another person gives 37x, it doesn’t matter so as long as we reach
our overall goal. Biblically a man can’t tell another man that he must give a
certain amount to World Missions, but in keeping with “speaking where the Bible
is silent” it doesn’t say anything about telling a whole church. Because if you
tell the whole church and just put the pressure on the church through a
combination of inspirational sermons and stories and showing the impact through
Good News Email then you never “technically” make a single person give. You
only admonish churches to help evangelize the world. But if the Bible prohibits
telling individuals how much they are to give, how can one church tell another
church how much they need to give? My movement minded leaders know that Paul
went around and instructing the churches to give money and send it to
Jerusalem, but that speaks to the second issue which is that Paul instructed
churches to give a benevolence to the church in Jerusalem. The fact is, if we want to live in the Book of Acts, then the
Central Leadership of the movement cannot tell us as church leaders or individual
members how much we need to support Missions.It’s their job to take our collection and decide how to spend the
money, not to decide how to spend the money and then take a collection to
support their decision. The first way is responsible and allows the members
to freely give. The second way forces us to do a Special Missions Contribution
every 3 months like we are currently doing. (9x in November, 3x in February,
and 20x in May). As the saying goes, we shouldn’t put the cart before the
horse.

Also
let’s not forget that LA doesn’t just get your Special Missions Contribution,
they also get your Central Administration payment and Mercy Payment. 16% of
your weekly contribution goes to Central Administration and 3% goes to MERCY Worldwide.
So to those disciples outside of LA, you don’t give your contribution to
support the work going on in your church. You give money to support your church
AND the LA church. Also 90% of money the is paid to MERCY Worldwide, does not
go to MERCY Projects. They go to salaries. Including a World Sector Leader. So basically, only 81% of your contribution is going to
support your ministry and that number has been shrinking. Now you understand why
we must plant more churches. And let’s remember, these are payments, these are
not gifts. In Eugene we reached a place where we could not make the payments
anymore. So I had to write an email to Kip and Michael Kirchner asking if we
cannot pay into Central Administration for 6 months. So basically I had to ask
if I could not send them money. That makes no literal or Biblical sense. Why should
one church be obligated to send another church money? This year alone LA will receive
over $700,000 in Central Administration and MERCY Payments!

To
close out I want to reiterate my opening statement: I believe in Special
Missions and I believe we should take up a Special Missions every year. If you
are looking for support for why we should not take Special Missions, this is
not the article. We absolutely need to support World Missions and be fired up
about it. I think it is very beneficial for us “rich” American disciples to
sacrifice for those who are on the Mission field in less fortunate mission
fields. But our current model is totally unbiblical and is clearly not being
blessed by God if you actually analyze the number instead of getting hyped up
about raw data. (2.6 million and only planting 6 churches is hardly being
blessed by God) Every church in the world believes that every good thing that
happens in their church is a blessing from God. But so often these religious
communities are just as blinded and misguided as their leaders are on doctrines
of salvation. We need to test the Spirit, consider our ways if we really want
to evangelize the world in this generation. I’m a firm believer in not just
throwing out a bunch of problems but rather coming up with solutions. So I
thought of a few solutions rather than just griping about how messed up our
system is. One solution could be the Local Evangelist coming up a Special
Missions goal for his own church and deciding how much stays in the local
church and how much is sent out. Right now our Evangelist are pretty much just
glorified supervisors. Until you are recognized in the Crown Thorn Council, you
really have no say into what churches get planted or how much money you are to
raise. Let’s let our Evangelist and Shepherds be Evangelist and Shepherds
instead of just Fundraising Coordinators. Why can’t I decide, based on the
needs of my church and the needs of the movement as a whole, what our own
Special Missions goal should be? Shouldn’t our Bible Talk Leaders have at least
a voice (not meaning that we have to take everything they say) in what they are
going to responsible for making sure we collect? Are we as evangelist not
capable to do that? If our own Evangelist aren’t capable of making a spiritually
informed decision like that, then we have a bigger problem than not being able
raise enough money this year. A second solution, is stop having churches that
are not growing, plant churches that are not growing. According to the City of
Angels own financial presentation our fifth fastest growing church of 2015 was
only growing at 41%. (these figures range from January -October 2015). That
means the other 56 churches are growing at less than 40% a year and some even
negatively. (including my church here in Eugene which saw a -18% growth in
2015) Wouldn’t it be wiser to invest in growing what we do have instead of
pounding struggling churches to sacrifice more? (In 2015 the Eugene church went
from 56 disciples to 46 disciples. This was after we sent out 8 Bible Talk
Leaders during to support other churches in 2015) What if we sustained what we had before expanding? Because
despite how amazing the workshops and GLC’s feel, the top leaders know that our
churches are not growing even though we make it sound amazing. All that happens
is that we end up planting churches with Special Missions money we raise one
year, but then these churches we plant do not become self-supporting in their
first year and we end up having to take up more Special Missions for them year
after year, all the while sacrificing our top leaders to go to LA for training.
Let’s invest in the numeric expansion of the churches we currently have before
investing in the geographic expansion in the churches we don’t yet have.
Another solution is to plant more American churches. Why? Cheaper plantings and
more people helping to raise Special Missions. Why not come up with a 5 year 50
City Plan for the United States. If we listed the top 50 cities in America, I’m
sure we will find that we are already in about half of them. Instead of
planting churches in expensive cities like Dubai or third world countries in
South America or Africa, where we will have to support forever, why not plant
cheaper cities here in the United States. Not that we are more important than
other nations, but let’s maximize our resources before we exhaust them. What we
are doing now is exhausting the resources before they come in. (You only need a
Special Missions in February because you’re going to run out of money in
March). American churches are cheaper by far to plant than international
churches. We’re
going to spend more than $15,000 just in buying plane tickets for missionaries
to go to foreign mission team planting. Increase the number of people giving so
that the number of times we have to give isn’t as taxing on the church. Here’s
another solution that is a bit radical but I don’t mind being the first do it.
Live in the Book of Acts: Stop paying our Church Leaders full time. In the book
of Acts the majority of church planting was done without pay. In our movement
though, our push is to get as many people as possible in the fulltime ministry,
which cost more money. I’ve already documented times where Paul preach full
time without pay. Let’s lead churches without a full time salary. Yes Paul
says, those who “preach the gospel for a living, should receive their living from the
gospel.”(1 Corinthians 9:14), but we can conveniently forget that this
in the middle of him saying that he doesn’t want to be paid for preaching. Why?
Because it may hinder the gospel. (1 Corinthians 9:12) If we are
having to force members to give 28x their weekly giving to the church, which
ends up being nearly 3 weeks’ salary if you’re giving a tithe of 10%, or over a
whole’s month’s salary for someone like myself who gives at 16%, I believe we
are hindering the gospel. Hindering, not in the geographic expansion but
hindering in spiritual growth, which may be a factor as to why our movement has
over a 80% fall away rate. Let’s just plant churches like they did in the book
of Acts, with no money. Let’s all just go get jobs, stop renting exorbitant
conference centers and hotels for workshops, conferences, and retreats and just
start meeting in houses like they did in the Book of Acts. Who are we trying to
impress? It’s hard for me to come expensive conferences two or three times a
year when my disciples back home can barely pay their rent. Yes let’s live in
the book of Acts!

Conclusion

To Kip

Brother I don’t
think you’re naïve. You’ve been doing this for 40 years. I believe you know
exactly what you are doing. Again this may seem like a personal attack, but that's only because you attribute everything back to yourself. So I have to take it back to you. I love you
but you are not being honest with God’s people. You have them believing a
beautiful lie. I pray you do not do what you are accustomed to doing. If my hunch
is correct you will try to bury this by slandering my name and discredit
anything I have to say. I know you’re ticked off right now. But more than that
you’re scared. This is why you’ve sent 4 evangelist to Eugene just because one
stepped out. You’re scared that what you have build will be found out for what
it is. I beg you to come into the light. We actually are rooting for you. I would
follow you to the day you die if you actually were a just honest truthful
disciple. If you would just throw off competing with the ICOC and the selfish
ambition it would not take you 2 generations of what you said would happen in
one. Please before its too late. You know this thing will not last to much
longer but you can’t let anyone know.

To the World Sector Leaders

You have an
opportunity here. You can keep going down the path you are going in the name of
“Family Til The End” or you can be courageous and call out the things you’ve
been seeing for years. Some of you have been expressing these things to Kip and
the Shepherds for years now. You owe it to God’s people.

To Every Evangelists in the ICC

Don’t be deceived
you cannot change it from within like you guys have been saying since we were
back in LA together. The foundation is broken. The sad part is many of you know
and choose to remain silent for all the obvious reasons. I’m not saying rebel
against everything, I’m calling you to take a stand or leave. Otherwise you will be just as
guilty as your leaders.

To the Remnant

It is happening
again. The thing you fear the most is happening again. Our movement is
crashing. There is no money and people are leaving faster than are being
baptized. You have influence. Do something. You know you felt it when that 3x
was announced. You felt it when you read all the boasting of stats. It is
happening. Please do something to save God’s people.

To Every Other Disciple in the ICC

Study these
things out. Ask the questions. If it feels weird, it is because it is weird. You
have the Holy Spirit, learn to trust it. The fact is the leaders need you more
than you need the leaders. They need your money, your evangelism, your friends,
your family, and your time. They only they have the authority you give them.

Remember, I am
not from the Old Movement. I was trained by the LA church. I was appointed by
the LA church. And I was sent out by the LA church. Since I’ve left they’ve
done exactly what I said they would. They’ve already began to soil my name with
sin that they helped cover up. They are using manipulation and deceit to win
the disciples after themselves. Soon will come a letter about marking and
disfellowshipment (again) In reality, that’s all they can do. They cannot
answer anything I am saying because they know its true. All they can say is
that I’m evil and to control who talks to me on Facebook. They fear the people
thinking for themselves. It’s too dangerous. They must protect themselves at
any cost. This is what they do. They show up and you show up guarded and with questions. They tell you how awful it was that someone left the church. I've been on the phone with TK, "When I disfellowship a guy, I make the church feel like I'm sad. That's the most important thing bro. The church must believe that you're actually sad" This is what he said to me when other people left the church in Eugene. They tell you how sad it is that Satan got to that person. Then before you realize it, they're giving you an inspirational lesson about how we need to save the world. You laugh and get excited and by the end of it you're more fired up to give them more of your time and money than you ever had. And then you treat the person who left as if they had a disease. A week ago, this person was your best friend in The Kingdom. You were going to leave the Lord and they helped you keep your faith. And now they may or may not be a disciple. Then you with the leaders. They hang out with you, buy you lunch and you feel so loved. You're so enamored with their spirituality. This person could never have an evil bone in their body. After all the other guy left. (By the way, can someone explain the least hurtful way to leave the ICC? There isn't one because it's the only true church out there right?) And just like that all the questions and suspicions you have are gone. This is how we're trained in LA.But the reality is the ICC will cease to exist in less than 10 years. It’s
crashing. It has no money and all the older mature disciples are leaving. Leaving
only naïve, young campus students who they will dangle leadership in front of
their faces so long that that’s all the young people care about anymore.

Don’t believe
me? Here’s the test: Read the book Acts and tell me what Five Core Convictions
you come up with.

64 comments:

Brother, this was amazing. I know you are going to get called all kinds of things. I have been a member of the ICOC and now a group that financially parted for 24 years so I saw it's start and then the end so to speak. It's like Kip never learned anything. You are 100% correct in your assessment. It's shameful that the ICC will crash in the same way. This is what happens when the lead guy has no formal Biblical training. He made up the studies from the NIV from faced value years ago. Once a disciple studies deeply from more accurate translations the questions start. In all honesty the church's obsession with Matt 28:18-20 has always been wrong. Our focus should be on the Sermon of the Mount fulfilling itself naturally with Matt 28:18-10. Your letter is courageous and I will be praying for you and your family. Peace and love to you. Be strong.

It is not easy being a disciple and wanting to follow God because Jesus predicted many would come in his name and deceive many such as these cults. Being marked or lied about by false christs could be considered a compliment that you reject the works of satan and the empty promises of the cult leaders and still choose God.

Thank for this blog, the good news is most people see through the deceptive false doctrines and manipulation and leave the man made cults. It is obvious to me looking back the ICC is not from God and is just another false prophet peddling the word of God for profit, cult leaders are masquerading as Evangelists. Maybe we could do a video interview as I am hoping to interview many exicc members to help others to leave the cult and find the real Christ not follow the false prophets. www.youtube.com/watch?v=L87t85j_Azs

32 plus years myself in the ICOC. This Makes me so sad. Sad for the pain the ICC will go through. The same pain those of us from the ICOC have all been through as well. It was hard and it was painful.. Filled with fear, misstrust, and the mass exits of so many disciples going on their own not knowing where to go who to trust. Kip was so wrong to create the mess and to divide and create a 2 nd Grp that created an atmosphere of division because he refused to be disciplined by God through brothers who knew the character sins he struggled with. I admire your courage and your conviction. God be your strength brother. I know you will have a place here.. Anyone of the ICOC would have you and welcome you home. I pray for Kip, God gave him a gift, he has used it for evil and a worldly pourpose. I pray God will sift his heart before he repeats the past. God bless your and your family.

Kip is another Diotrephes, God is sending prophets to wipe his cult off the face of the Earth, in the end it will be Kip and less than 30 disciples, God is destroying this cult their arrogance is also destroying the cult.

To understand the contempt cult leaders have for followers who question or those who reject their totalistic rule all you need to do is watch the first 3 minutes of this video www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bRBFhMEQFk

Even though leaving a cult is a very personal thing this video helps explain the traumatic process many go through upon leaving a cult, I pray this can help people and bless them www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kXQ09wPLEo

Having read allot of the dramatic hysterical or just hateful ICC leaders responses on Facebook to Gabe's blog here it comes as no surprise the leaders are acting as if Gabe is the worst person ever for actually bringing up real issues. The ICC cult is a joke, anytime anyone exposes them they become hysterical because they know what is written against them is true and so all they can do is act hysterically or deny everything or demonize people, same old cult madness typical of so many similar cults. The ICC is led by a false prophet with a god-complex, it is going to come crashing down like a Jenga tower yet again as more and more leaders leave.

Come to Turning Point!! Formally ICOC AMS has changed since all those years ago. It's very progressive now. You need a place? We would be happy to have you and your family. I think right now is a good time to focus on love, forgiveness, and healing. I'm so sorry for how you were treated, but I think God has a plan for you in all of this.

Typical religious judgmental slander from Carlos Vargas on his facebook regarding this issue, guess he gets that attitude from his discipler.

""Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord NOT to STRIVE ABOUT words to NO PROFIT, to the ruin of the hearers. But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. And THEIR MESSAGE will spread LIKE CANCER. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort, who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past; and they overthrow the faith of some.II Timothy 2:14, 16-18 NKJV"- When we see what happen in perspective we can realise that it is useless got engaged in useless discussions.How many detractors of the Movement, the former or the New Movement, have risen up?Many! Have they built their own movements that honour God? No. Have there been people that have followed them making a difference for Christ? No. Do they devoted to evangelise the nations in this generation? No. Have they gone to all nations? No. Has the Spirit of God manifested Himself in them mightily? No. Are they full of grace and joy? No, no, no and no!So why to continue wasting one minute more of the precious time that God gives us to save the lost people! They heard what the Holy Spirit had to say through His servants.All God's people get back to put to work building the Kingdom of God on earth!"

There's really nothing new under the sun. Wherever Kip goes, there he is, with the same issues, the same pride, the same desperate need for adulation. This is exactly what he brought about the first time. When this version is exposed, what will he do? I shudder to think.

You have the Holy Spirit, learn to trust it...this is an interesting statement to leave after your article. I want to know one thing: Did you receive the Spirit of God through by/through the gospel you heard and believed or did God work miracles among you by your new found knowledge.And by the way mark this: God's church will not be destroyed, not in 10 years, or 20 but it will endure forever. Thanks have a good day

God's church is never going to be destroyed, Amen to that Matthew 16v18. The question to ask is if a particular church is God's church or the devil's imitation 2 Corth 11. It's often something people don't even think to question, they just assume everything the leader says is from God if he is skilled in manipulating the bible and looking good.

You have the Holy Spirit, learn to trust it...this is an interesting statement to leave after your article. I want to know one thing: Did you receive the Spirit of God through by/through the gospel you heard and believed or did God work miracles among you by your new found knowledge.And by the way mark this: God's church will not be destroyed, not in 10 years, or 20 but it will endure forever. Thanks have a good day

My father is a leader at that church. I never became a disciple because I left to live with my mom before I became a teenager. I never did learn anything from the bible living with him. Today I have a wonderful relationship with Jehovah God and feel like I am truly learning the truth. JW.org is a wonderful website to research the bible scriptures deeply.

Gabe you have stated your truth i can do nothing but to aplaud your actions. So many have come to believe a lie that even i so boldly believed. God at the proper time will open the eyes to the ones who need to see this thank you for exposing truths.

In the ICOC, I was in the teen ministry as a teen of 16, I was a teen leader, I was a college bible talk leader, discipler of older women older than me, married women when I wasn't even married, I was in the singles ministry, lived with disciple room mates, babysat for many of the world sector leaders, lived as a full time nanny for a world sector leader, was discipled by personal assistants to world sector leaders, worked at the church office, made invitations, power point presentations, indoor digital signage, websites, brochures, pamphlets, newsletters for Doug Jacoby, marketing materials for all the CA, bay area regions, virginia church, maryland church, dc church, campus ministry, I even was in a special needs ministry and children special needs child care leader and teacher, helped in the Spanish ministry, I even got a certificate for "most fruitful" one year for converting my mom, dad, step mom, aunt, coworkers, fellow students...i studied with so many and helped baptize over 30 people in that span of years...and guess what...

I was treated like crap, and used by most every single big leader and small leader. And even thrown under the bus by someone who (who's wife and he helped me to convert me at 16) wrote in a letter to Kip, saying he had "selfish ambition to become a world sector leader and jealousy of the other world sector leaders" and wanted to have the best psychological way (for example "behavior modification vs life transformation") to "create the best efficient "malleable leaders" that are "discipled from depths of their own character" to be made "obedient" to multiply "as many as possible" without resources for the members to get healing and guidance, nor counseling, just to multiply.

Which turns not to be Christian at all in the long run.

No matter if you are in the ICC, ICOC, COC, BACC, or any main line Churches of Christ, the core doctrine is , IS corrupt and not healthy and a cult. These members are Campelites, research learn and read more about what it truely is. Every 20 yrs or so statistically the branches end up splitting and causing dissention and calling the other branch "hell bent".

Origin of Alexander Campbell's church doctrine (Campbelizm) [Main line Church of Christ doctrine]

Here is the link to Mike Taliferro’s article that Gabe Reed mentioned:

http://www.icochotnews.com/?q=node/96

And here is the link to an article written by one of the ICOC churches which details the destruction that Kip’s leadership caused and admits how degraded their system was in allowing corrupt leaders to rise into the leadership under Kip’s guidance:(Article titled "Back to the Matrix")http://www.newcovpublications.com/icc/matrix.htm

If you compare this article to what is going on in the ICC right now, you can see that Kip McKean’s abusive history is once again repeating itself.

I like what is written in that first article "Of course, this begs a question. Since the Portland Movement so often talks about winning the world in one generation, well, hasn’t Kip had one generation already to do it? Didn’t he start trying in 1979 in Boston? It seems to me that after 30 years he is back to square one."

Gabe made some great points and showed much evidence about the fallacies in the ICC’s “one-man central leadership” doctrine. Here is some more evidence to shed some more light on the subject of how the first-century church was actually structured:

Phillippians 4:10-20 is a passage in the Bible that sheds some light on how some of the Churches made decisions on financial issues.“Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need.”

When Paul writes “not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving”, in the original Greek he actually uses this in business terms as an arrangement for financial support. The phrase “share with me” is sugkoinoneo which means to partake or participate in something. He had gone through Macedonia as part of his missionary journey and this was after he had been accepted by the Apostles. This scripture shows that many of the Churches did not agree to give Paul financial support, which means that many Churches individually decided what to do with their Church funds and who they would support. Paul noted that the Philippians were willing to send him the necessities he needed when his journey led him to Thessalonica.

This is very different from the system that the ICC has where the upper levels of their “central leadership” (with Kip at the head of it) have to approve of everything and even dictate where the money goes while the leaders of the ICC’s “satellite churches” have no say in the matter as Gabe pointed out.

It's about a month since this blog was created and none of the cult evangelists have addressed any of the issues brought up, all they do is deny divert and distract or attack hatefully any critics of their man made system, like Diotrephes.

Hopefully many of the members are aware that the cult uses those manipulative mind control techniques to bury the issues that probably as before will end the group. It is not the kingdom of God but just as Jesus predicted false Christs. My prayer is more members leave and find the true grace and love of the real Christ not the legalism of false Christs. youtu.be/nmPzT5qwBjk

You've inspired me to write a blog about my personal experience with church ;-) we all have our journey to God, some more painful than others, but if heaven awaits then nothing else matters no matter how hellish this reality is how satanic churches are and how loveless people are in these end times. xy20w.blogspot.co.uk

The ICC was not created in order to “evangelize the world”. If Kip really wanted evangelization then he would have stayed in the ICOC and helped to clean up the mess he created. Instead Kip wanted to stand at the top of an organization under his control so that he could control the money and pay himself like a CEO and continue living the upper-class life that he was living before. Many of the other ICC evangelists and upper leadership only joined with Kip after they were laid off from the ICOC. The only thing they care about is their jobs and continuing to live their upper middle-class lives that they wouldn’t be able to live otherwise since they do not have any practical job skills. They do not really care about God or the Bible as can be shown by the blatant lies and slander they make against those who point out their corruption. They have chosen profits over repentance, and they aggressively protect their wicked system which is the source of their income.

I saw an interesting quote the other day about “toxic people” and this equally applies to a “toxic organization” such as the ICC: “When a toxic person can no longer control you, they will try to control how others see you. The misinformation will feel unfair, but stay above it, trusting that other people will see the truth, just like you did.”

A while ago (about seven months ago) my friend Josh who was still in the ICC decided to speak out about the hypocrisy he saw among the leadership and the ICC’s coercion for money. The ICC responded by calling him “deceived by Satan” and because he was emotional and vulnerable to being manipulated they were able to coerce him into being silent about it for a while. Even though they silenced him my friend’s big mistake is that he didn’t leave the ICC; he thought that he could somehow stay and still fellowship with the people whom he called “friends”. He couldn’t be more wrong. Because he had the guts to speak up once the ICC had determined that he was a “threat” and the ICC leaders and his so-called “friends” proceeded to slander him and tell lies about him behind his back even though he was still a member of their “church”. The purpose was to throw mud on his reputation and falsely discredit him so that he could not become a “threat” to their system again. When he confronted them on it they denied it; lying to his face. Eventually he did the smart thing and finally left, it’s just that some people find it hard to let go of their old relationships. After he left they became more aggressive with their slander against him and they even posted garbage about him on his Facebook page. This is the kind of backstabbing that goes on in this toxic organization.

After the aftermath of the Reeds leaving the ICC, the Eugene ICC church has updated/changed their website.Also posting a new article calling the ICOC lukewarm at best.http://www.eugeneicc.org/gods-sold-out-movement/

It's not just the ICOC they hate ( and every other church ), it's also their own members if they do don't enough to meet the desires of the leaders. The core of the ICC cult is a bunch of greedy haters. My advice is for any member of the ICC to leave the dictatorship and find a good church rather than be an enabler of greedy haters.

The ICC is scared of the ICOC; mainly because the ICOC is familiar with Kip McKean’s past abusive history and because the ICOC doctrines such as baptism for the forgiveness of sins are similar to the ICC’s. The difference between the ICC and the ICOC is that the ICOC no longer abuses their members for money (like they did before when Kip was in control), therefore the ICC is afraid that their members will go over there to escape their control and financial coercion (as many have already done). And with the ICC’s 80% to 90% dropout rate it looks like many of the ICOC churches are doing better evangelistically as well, which is all the more reason for ICC members to go over to the ICOC. Now we see an increase of slanderous anti-ICOC propaganda being put out by the ICC because of this; out of fear of losing their members.

This is why they become frantic every time a member of the ICC goes over to the ICOC and they proceed to slander and tell lies about them. I remember when I lived in an ICC-controlled household and the slander frenzy that ensued when two of my roommates went over to the ICOC. One of the roommates left to live with his parents but the other one had nowhere else to go so he was still staying with us. There were three of us left who were still with the ICC and the leaders called us to tell us to move out of the apartment before the end of the month, which was just two weeks away. This would have left our “former brother in Christ” by himself with no way to pay the next months rent (and no, the ICC leaders had no intention of reimbursing my former roommate either; they were trying to tell us to withhold our rent and save it for another apartment, thus leaving the ICOC-affiliated roommate with nothing), this was just morally wrong. I refused to do as they asked and told them that this was just something that you do not do to people; to stab them in the back like that by leaving them with no way to pay their rent. All this just because they decided to go over to the ICOC. They slandered him, saying that he was “in sin” for going over to the ICOC, and that if we continued to live with him then we were “tolerating sin”. Their plans fell apart though when they couldn’t secure their new apartment, but it goes to show how they fear their members going over to the ICOC and how morally messed up they become out of desperation of losing members.

Some do, often very educated people end up in cults, they are led astray spiritually not just intellectually, it's often an issue of pride and stubbornness. If a cult member thinks they are following God regardless of education they mindlessly do what the cult leader or false prophet tells them to do. What cults are good at is manipulating minds, they get a honourary degree in manipulation and deception.

I've done a video about religious pride, basically their education and openness or growth stops the moment they become proud. https://youtu.be/4Sadgfer3_0

I think he's with the University Church of Eugene ICOC, but I could be wrong. To be honest, anything is better than the ICC. I know the Eugene ICOC has very capable & genuine leaders. Hope Gabe & his family are getting their needs met & the encouragement they need.

Praying for you, brother. Please consider visiting an ICOC fellowship. We really have made changes in our churches since 2003 and I think you will be encouraged by the Holy Spirit and enjoy the one another relationships. I will pray for you.

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Guys, I know I´m going in a differente direction, but just think about it for a moment. All of this divisions among protestant churchs are about "doctrine" based on Scripture. But see, where did the Bible come from? Who sad wich texts were inspired? There must be an authority to state wich texts would build the Bible, given that they didn't fall from the sky.

Please, just think about it for a moment! If you don't have the answer, then go search for it: Where did the Bible come from?